With the Spring Festival approaching, the south had been washed by two weeks of unceasing drizzle. The scenery of misty rain and weeping willows was beautiful, but visitors still longed at heart for a sunny new year. Yunnan was the exception — sky clear, sun brilliant. With four or five days still to go before the holiday, tourists had already poured in from all directions.
A few days prior, Ba Yunye had delivered her passengers to Lijiang and was now helping at the Haitang Yin Guesthouse that Long Ge had recently taken over. The small Naxi-style courtyard, located in the ancient town, had been renovated into something fresh and stylish — perfectly suited to the romantic notion of “life elsewhere” that drew many young men and women to Lijiang. The courtyard already had several crabapple trees, and with the weather warming, the blossoms had burst open — each tree a translucent, delicate pink. Beneath one tree hung a small swing, which had become a beloved spot for guests to take photos.
In the mornings, Ba Yunye swept up the fallen petals from under the trees as usual. The young woman at the front desk called out to her, saying her phone was ringing. She grabbed her dustpan and jogged over in a few quick steps. It was Ba Yuanye.
Ba Yuanye was five years younger than her. At the age of eight, she had been adopted by a kind couple from Tengchong. The new family was not wealthy, but the foster parents were extremely warm-hearted people. Word was that she had gotten into university two years ago. This younger sister had been raised very well by her foster parents — she had not forgotten Ba Nainai’s kindness. Every few years she would return to the old site of the Pu’er orphanage to look around, and she would also go to pay her respects at Ba Nainai’s grave.
Seeing her call come in, Ba Yunye was overjoyed.
“Yun Jie, they’ve come again…” But the first words out of Yuanye’s mouth came with a suppressed sob.
“They” was no other than the “bereaved family members” of those who had died in the car accident. They had caused the most trouble in the early years. After the orphanage was relocated, they occasionally came to harass the old site.
“I’m right here near the empty lot. I can see a few people spraying paint on the door.” Ba Yuanye said. “They’re spraying those words again…”
Ba Yunye didn’t need to ask for details. She understood perfectly — it was nothing other than those degrading and abusive words aimed at women, designed to humiliate as completely as possible.
“Don’t show yourself. I’ll come back tomorrow and see for myself.” She said calmly, then just as she was about to hang up, something came to her. “Yuanye — they’ll be at it with the spray paint for a while yet. Call Muyê out, and have him keep an eye on who’s leading the group. Then follow that person — see where he goes home to, whether he’s local or staying at a hotel.”
“Alright…”
Ba Muyê was the one surviving boy among the children the orphanage had taken in. He had a cleft lip which, due to limited medical conditions in his childhood, had not been perfectly repaired. Like Ba Yunye, he had not done well academically, barely making it through high school. He now worked at a bubble tea shop in Pu’er, earning a modest income, but he was an honest and gentle soul.
Ba Yunye sat in the courtyard basking in the sun, and recalled that a few days ago, Diao Zhuo had mentioned he had asked someone to track down the whereabouts of several of the accident victims’ relatives — most appeared to have their own lives and didn’t seem to have the time or inclination to make trouble from across the country in Yunnan.
She had heard that the mining zone had not yet shut down for the holiday, and that Diao Zhuo would likely have no leave for the Spring Festival. Ba Yunye had previously promised him that once the guesthouse made it through the Spring Festival rush, she would go find him in Kashgar. Meng Xiao’ai could go — so could she. It seemed like a kind of competition, and also a kind of jealousy.
By evening, Yuanye called back to say the ringleader was a local and was not staying at a hotel. Muyê, who had some nerve about him, had disguised himself as a delivery man from a bubble tea shop and followed the man all the way to his front door, and had already obtained his exact address.
“Yun Jie, what are you going to do?” Yuanye asked.
Ba Yunye crossed her legs casually. “Nothing much — just have a proper word with them about a few things.”
“They all look like people with nothing legitimate going on — like a bunch of… street thugs.” Yuanye said, worried.
“All the better if they are street thugs.” Ba Yunye smiled. She was far more afraid they might be the genuine bereaved family members.
The next day, Ba Yunye set off back to Pu’er, not arriving until eleven at night. She dropped her bags at the hotel, took the address Muyê had given her, and headed straight for the “victim’s relative’s” home. By midnight, she was pounding on the man’s door.
The man opened it briskly. The moment he laid eyes on her, his face lit up. He cursed and then reached to grab her while saying, “New girl, eh? Haven’t seen you before! Damn that A’Xia, sitting on a gem like this and not calling for you sooner — had to make me pay a little extra before sending me such a fine beauty…”
Ba Yunye understood that he had mistaken her for a woman of the night. Without batting an eye, she followed him inside, then turned and locked the door behind her. The man was already lunging toward her in his impatience: “Haven’t had a taste in forever! Tonight I’m going to — AHHH!!”
A howl of pain. The man crashed to the floor flat on his back. Ba Yunye twisted his arm behind him in a lock. She gripped his right little finger, and the moment he moved, she bent it the wrong way. The pain had him gritting his teeth and breaking out in a cold sweat all over his forehead.
“You think you can play honeytrap games with me?! I haven’t even touched you!” the man bellowed.
“You had quite a good time with your spray paint yesterday, didn’t you?” Ba Yunye said through gritted teeth, the edge of her manner fierce and unrestrained. “Those words you sprayed up there — are they a description of your mother, or the epitaph for your whole family’s grave?”
The man stared, dumbstruck. Too astonished to speak, and too much in pain.
“You — whose family member are you, exactly?” Ba Yunye gave him no time to breathe, interrogating him with a hard stare.
The man of course had nothing to say. His finger was being wrenched back in a grip so tight it was nearly snapping. He writhed in agony, and after much stammering, he finally managed: “Rao… Rao…”
Ba Yunye gave a cold snort. “Rao Qinghui?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
She slapped the back of his head without ceremony. “He had no grandson like you!”
The man evidently felt this beating was profoundly unjust. With almost no internal struggle, he gave up his employer with startling ease: “Someone paid me to do this! I’m just doing someone else’s bidding!”
He had been hired — this piece of information was not in the least surprising to Ba Yunye. She pressed him further, asking which family member had hired him. He shook his head desperately, either unwilling to say or genuinely unable.
Ba Yunye tightened her grip. The man cried out hoarsely, pointing at his phone on the floor under the sofa, offering up the phone number. As for anything else, he claimed to know absolutely nothing.
“This number… this number, that’s how they contacted me!”
She memorized it, then relaxed her hold. The man collapsed onto the floor in a crumpled heap, gasping heavily. A knock sounded at the door again, and he flinched with alarm, thinking this woman must have backup waiting outside. Ba Yunye pursed her lips, walked over, and pulled the door open. A woman in heavy makeup, fishnet stockings, and a short skirt appeared in the doorway. Taking in the scene before her, she wore the expression of someone who had seen it all before — languid and indifferent, glancing at the time and asking vaguely: “Boss, how’s it going?”
The man peered out and realized this was actually the woman he had called for. Though he had just taken a beating from Ba Yunye, after this comparison, he found himself feeling thoroughly uninterested. He waved his hand and sent the woman away.
“Miss, how about this… you take all the money they gave me, and you let me off the hook…” the man said, looking glum.
Ba Yunye gave him a contemptuous look. She thought: you’re old enough to be calling me “Miss”? She cleared her throat. “Since you’re so handy with spray paint — here’s the deal. Go buy some more paint tomorrow, go back to every place you sprayed, and spray over all of it. Make it look exactly the way it did before. If it’s not done, I’ll come visit you for a chat every evening.”
“I will, I will!” The man nodded repeatedly, like a pecking bird.
She asked him a few more questions, then walked out and stood at the stairwell landing, her expression grave.
Yuanye’s guess had been right — the man inside was just a petty thug, and the person who had hired him was also a petty thug who had been too busy to handle it himself and had subcontracted the “job” to this one. The “job” was worth five thousand yuan — for him, a guaranteed profit with no overhead.
He had heard from the person above him that someone at the orphanage had been involved in a dispute with a family named Rao over an extramarital affair, and that someone had even died as a result. Although they were doing it for money, they considered themselves to be “serving justice.” The old orphanage site had been empty and unmanaged for years, so no matter how badly they vandalized it, it seemed no one ever came to stop them. After spraying the offensive words, he would photograph it and send it to the person above, who would ask whether there had been any interference. When he replied there had been none, the money was quickly transferred.
That night, Ba Yunye did not close her eyes for a single moment. Following the contact information as a thread to trace the whole network, she tracked down one person after another who had previously caused trouble at the site. Only then did she discover that in the very year her elder sister had died, the harassment of the orphanage had been nothing more than a “job.” The people who hired them were supposedly the family members of the crash victims, but the hired thugs themselves had no idea who had engaged them — they had all been passed along through referrals. Several of the go-betweens had been arrested and imprisoned in recent anti-gang crackdowns over the past few years.
For a long time, with the truth unclear, Ba Yunye had held back and not acted. But now that it had been confirmed that the contents of the final message had nothing to do with any extramarital affair — that it might even have been part of a deliberate scheme — she felt all the more that the years of slander her elder sister had endured were terribly unjust, and terribly sad. They were both people without any direct relatives, without the shelter and support of family. If even she abandoned the cause, her elder sister might carry that false reputation forever.
As the sky began to lighten, Ba Yunye, exhausted in body and spirit, walked along streets that had no one else on them. The distant sound of a bamboo broom sweeping a floor drifted over, somehow making the stillness of the moment even more pronounced.
*Haozhang, *Fan* — After a night of searching, though some of the go-betweens remained untrackable, she had still managed to obtain two partial names and contact numbers of the people who had been transferring money.
Most of the thugs had been contacted by these two individuals. Reportedly, in addition to causing trouble, the thugs had initially been instructed to break into the orphanage and search through Ba Xiye’s belongings — nominally to “find valuables to sell for compensation.” In the early period, the contact had been “*Fan,” using bank transfers. In recent years it had changed to “*Haozhang,” using Alipay.
Who were these two people? Ba Yunye gripped her phone tightly, her thoughts in turmoil. She didn’t know whether to call the numbers now and risk tipping them off, or to stay silent. Suddenly, hurried footsteps came from behind her. She didn’t turn around, but her instincts told her that whoever it was had her as their target.
The person drew close, reaching out toward her. At that moment, Ba Yunye’s body dropped slightly — she pulled her fists up to guard both sides of her head and spun around in one swift motion. A punch was already flying toward the approaching figure’s face, and with just centimeters to spare, she let the force bleed out.
She recognized the figure’s build and face — Diao Zhuo.
The look of shock on her face was identical to that of the thugs when they had first seen her.
This place, this hour — he had no reason to be here. She had only sent him her location after arriving in Pu’er, along with her “battle plan” for the night ahead.
Ba Yunye’s lips parted slightly, eyes wide open, both hands still raised in their defensive guard, poised at any moment to throw the next punch.
“You — how are you here?!”
The faint light of dawn had not yet filled the world with color. The street lamps burned a dim amber yellow. Everything around them looked like the muted backdrop of a black-and-white television screen — and yet the figure of Diao Zhuo, standing just before her, was vivid and alive, so much so that he seemed like something from a dream. When he gave no answer, Ba Yunye drew a slow breath and reached up to lightly pinch his face.
Damn. He’s real.
In the next moment, he pulled her into his arms.